


the qualities of fire in a vacuum

by connections



Category: Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu | Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Genre: Character Study, Gen, everything he sees is red, second person pov eventually, the author needs to cope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26914783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/connections/pseuds/connections
Summary: Fire is red. Some people have red hair, Reinhard thinks. Some people have red hair and a faithful way of walking and an even more faithful way of existing. Then they cease to exist, and you should’ve seen it coming, but you didn’t. You didn’t.When Kircheis dies, Reinhard finds himself falling. It’s cold down there.
Relationships: Siegfried Kircheis & Reinhard von Lohengramm
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	the qualities of fire in a vacuum

**Author's Note:**

> (hey. don’t think too hard about the title. yes, i intend to make you think about the title with this.)
> 
> disclaimer—i‘ve only watched die neue these so that’s what i‘m basing this on. might not work as well with the original version.

There is a wall before him.

„Permission to launch the attack, Your Excellency?”

It’s red, his tired eyes suggest. Red like everything in this world, opposing him like everyone in this world.

„Your Excellency.”

Oberstein’s ridiculous artificial gaze awaits him to his right. Before him is reality, before him are lightyears of universe that the simple word _empty_ contains too much for. Before him is a ridiculously strong glass pane and beneath his fingers is solid, solid steel and it’s all too easy to lift one hand up and loosely point it somewhere towards eternity and open his ridiculous mouth.

„Feuer“, he says, voice like shards without edges.

Fire is red, too. It‘s a poor world that he lives in, painted with only one colour like this. Laser beams are whipping by outside, and others are coming back, but they’re farther away, and Oberstein’s leaving like the shadow he is. Reinhard closes his eyes.

Fire is red. Some people have red hair, he thinks. Some people have red hair and a faithful way of walking and an even more faithful way of existing. Then they cease to exist, and you should’ve seen it coming, but you didn’t, and you already went through a phase of wanting to throw the chessboard at a wall, and you screamed and cried and asked the universe for a favor (swallowing you whole, black merciless void that it is). And then you accept it, but refuse to accept it. And the world becomes all sketchy linework, blue on black, extending a papery hand with a paintbrush and all the red things you know in it. You take it. You take it, and you bathe the world in blood and fire.

What else is there to do?

:::

There isn‘t much he remembers about the months he and Kircheis spent in Kapche-Lanka. _Remembers_ as in images, as in knowing what the air tasted like or if the mornings were heavier than the evenings or if weekdays mattered at all back then. He remembers that people wanted to kill him, but didn’t manage to, and his promotion to Junior Grade Lieutenant afterwards. He doesn’t care.

The only thing he sees are strands of red hair against a desert of blue, blue ice. The sharp wind playing with them. How they both laughed. How it was warm.

Kircheis was always warm. Burning, always glinting with a gentleness fire can‘t muster; there were always some kind words sleeping on his lips so he could tell them to spring forward and cling to Reinhard‘s skin and dig for his heart anytime, for a heart made of flesh, for a heart real enough to be ripped out of his chest.

Reinhard said, _we‘ll make this universe ours,_ but he didn’t say, _you have to stay close to me and fend off the cold for me because the universe is cold and dead and I can‘t conquer a thing this cruel without you by my side,_ because this has always been obvious.

Oh, how he wishes he‘d have said this when he still had a voice that flowed like wine. (Red wine, aged; the expensive kind he used to have a glass of sometimes to celebrate with—

with—

he—

now, his words are stones, and stones can only ever be thrown at people. (There‘s no one to tell it to anyway. To tell anything to.)

Blue ice, melting into blue eyes, melting into a dead body with emptiness for eyes.

Wind so sharp it cuts off a red, red strand that falls into Reinhard‘s hands. It‘s cold.

:::

Stars die. They live, and some blow up, and others don‘t, and they die. It‘s a given. Everything in this vast, impossible universe will die, the people and the stars and then the universe will eat itself.

It‘ll be gone, eventually. It‘s still there, now.

Red and huge and overwhelming, bearing a loss that‘s more alive than Reinhard will ever be, like some sort of weird little dog that gnaws at his heels wherever he goes but when he turns around it sits and looks up at him with the eyes of a puppy and he knows it‘s unfair and he knows puppies with eyes are evil but he can‘t bring himself to hate it. He only ever hates himself. He‘s only ever angry at himself.

Why, one might ask. There is a dead man, there is a dead friend, why do you hate yourself?

_Oh, you didn‘t blame me,_ says Oberstein. That it surprises him, but it doesn‘t really. _He was someone special to you,_ say the others. _It wouldn’t devour your soul like this if one of us died._

He was someone special to you.

He is. He was. _Special_ is not the ideal way to phrase it. There is no ideal way to phrase it. There is nothing to say, and nothing to do, and nothing—nothing—that will atone for the fact that you had a fight with each other and that it was you who didn‘t make it right again and that he still died for you like your life was worth something. (He always told you that. He said that your life was equal to a galaxy full of stars, _and someone has to protect all that light, right?_ He didn‘t ever say it out loud. His smile did.)

He died for you, and all you would’ve had to say was: _I‘m sorry._

He died for you and you were there, right there, next to him on the cold damned floor, promising him the universe like you always do like a broken music box like a pretty bird without a head to think

like someone who didn‘t want to lose their friend.

You lost your friend.

Now you should be mourning him, which is what you do, which is empty and so, so pointless. Now you should be preserving his legacy. Go ahead. Tell yourself you were wrong. You can‘t?

You can‘t.

Two million lives don‘t matter to you anymore. Neither do twenty-five billion. Neither does any figure, anywhere. There‘s only one life that counts, but this star is dead now, defunct and without light and without warmth—so why would it matter now? Why?

So you take all the others. You drink blood in place of fire, you don‘t hesitate. There are people in this universe, and some are in your way, and where you would have figured something out to protect them back then, you abandon them now. Go on, let them die. Kill them.

The universe is black, viscous. You‘re tired. Your hands are cold. You want to die, too, and it‘s kind of understandable. You can‘t die.

You say, _Feuer_ , and it‘s all the revenge you get.

:::

Oberstein steps away. He does leave the room, but before that, he stops and turns back around and looks at the boy sitting there; the universe spread out to his feet and his sides and over his head and ever farther, ever farther away. The blonde boy who has made the universe his.

The blonde boy who didn‘t want the universe, or at least not all of it, or at least not this universe which is incomplete to him.

His eyes adjust to the colours flashing by.

The blonde boy with a hungry heart and a starving soul. The lone wolf howling at the sky but not the moon. There is a dead, dead star up there. The wolf misses the star and doesn‘t know what to do or how to live without it, so he runs and runs and rips the path beneath his paws apart.

Oberstein smiles a bitter smile.

He‘s so helpless it would hurt to watch if it were anyone else watching. The desperation drips from his voice and taints his actions and Oberstein knows, knows, that all he can see is red.

There was another boy, there was another part of him, and he misses him. God, how he must miss him.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! kudos and comments will pierce through the mist of existential loneliness that surrounds me!
> 
> so. after episode 23, fifteen minutes of lying on the ground face-down and screaming at whichever wall was most likely listening at that moment, some tears because of mamo’s awe-inducing performance and some tears because of sadness (sadness. so much sadness), i had to write something. here, have this mess i conjured up about reinhard being, essentially, sad. but also helpless. like he’s just had to learn how cruel and unalterable this universe really is (which he did). so if i have managed to leave you feeling empty and helpless after reading this, i’m going to pat myself on the back. if i didn’t, please tell me anyways so i can try to be more evil next time!
> 
> @ [ginoskanshikan](https://twitter.com/ginoskanshikan) on twitter


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